The Russian T-72B3 Model 2016: Old but Formidable

Background:

The T-72B3-2016 or its loosely known nicknames, aliases, etc. al. is one of Russia’s latest attempts of upgrading the venerable T-72 series, an icon of the former Cold War. This took the lessons learned from previous upgrades and improved upon it with newer subsystems and increased DRI capabilities, as well as protection and lethality efforts. This upgrade is likely to serve the Russian Army well into the next decade and afford the Russian Army a capable, yet affordable platform for its security needs. The focus on this evolution of the series will be divided into three main categories; survivability, communications and lethality. The Russian Army also elected to focus on these three main categories due to their assessment of the current and future security situation. The operational environment that the Russian Army executes in, requires them to possess a low cost, relative affordable and sustainable general purpose main battle tank, which can be employed throughout the full spectrum of operations. As a side note and for clarification purposes, the Russians are likely to upgrade the entirety of their T-72 fleet and formulate a commonality program in which all variants will  be brought up to a single standard. For the purpose of clarity, this review will focus on that and not on specific material solution models used for demonstration purposes.